Peri Hartman wrote:
There's been a number of times this topic - using EVs to buffer the grid -
but a fundamental question keeps lurking in my mind. With our current
technology, each charge-discharge cycle takes a nibble of battery life
away. Without some sort of compensation to the EV owner, I don't see him
agreeing to helping the grid.
This is my concern as well. Nobody trusts the utilities. Building a
peaking plant is very expensive. If they can trick consumers into buying
the batteries for them, and then use them for little or nothing, they
will do it!
It's going to be just about impossible to prove that the utilities
shortened (or didn't shorten) your EV's battery life. It won't get
decided on an objective basis -- it will fall into the murky world of
politics, lawyers, spin-doctors, lying-with-statistics, etc.
Let's knock it down to the personal level. Would you rather buy a
special generator, just to deal with blackouts that happen a few times a
year? Or, would you rather be able to use the EV you've already got to
power your home during a blackout? The EV option is clearly the most
attractive: It's cleaner, cheaper, quieter, and more convenient.
The utilities face the same situation; but they have a third option. Let
your neighbor buy the generator, and then use *his* power! Maybe slip
him $1 for gas, and ignore his cost for the generator and its
maintenance, noise, and pollution.
It's sad, because each side has something to gain. It could be a win-win
situation for both the utilities *and* EV drivers.
What if... the utilities got into the battery rental business. They buy
the battery packs, and get a better deal than we can due to volume. It
creates a "standard" battery pack/UPS, that carmakers as well as
hobbyists can use. We rent the pack from the utilities. We get a cheaper
pack, and they get the right to use it for peak power. If they use it
too much and shorten its life, they pay the consequences.
Since it is *their* battery pack, they could include safeguards against
running it dead, overcharging it, etc. that the typical consumer would
otherwise ignore. Your monthly electric bill could even include KWH
usage from your EV.
Note that nothing says this standard battery/UPS has to go in an EV.
There are probably 1000 times more UPS out there than EVs. Even people
that don't have an EV could have one in their garage, to provide peaking
power or AC power during blackouts.
--
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology,
in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
-- Carl Sagan
--
Lee Hart -- See my Xmas projects at www.sunrise-ev.com/projects.htm
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